The phone call Joe Lynn Turner received from Ritchie Blackmore in the early 1980s when the guitarist needed a singer for Rainbow paved the way for him to be the go-to vocalist of Blackmore. Later, the frontman also had a brief stint with Deep Purple. Recently, Turner recalled how he had been invited into both cult acts while chatting with Loudersound.
“I was living in a studio apartment in New York City with roaches,” Turner said as he recalled how Blackmore had invited him to join Rainbow. “The phone rang one day, and it was Ritchie asking if I wanted to audition for Rainbow. I said, ‘Yeah! I need the gig. I don’t want it; I need it!’”
Joe then visited the band in the Long Island studio where they had been working, and the act already had a hit song in mind to record. The singer recalled, “So I went to Long Island where they were recording. We cracked open a six-pack of Heineken, then they threw me right in the room and said, ‘Here’s a song we’re working on called ‘I Surrender.’”
Then, when the interviewer asked the rocker if Blackmore had invited him into Deep Purple since he liked his voice or just wanted to annoy Ian Gillan, Turner replied, “I think it’s both. And I think Ritchie wanted to piss everybody off. At that point, I’d been working with Foreigner. But then Lou Gramm came back. Then I got a call from Bad Company’s people. And then I got the call from Deep Purple. It was unbelievable.”
Joining Deep Purple had been a dream come true when the musician was invited into the cult act. The rocker said, “A dream came true. I always had this philosophy, be it, act like it, and it will happen. So I was in Deep Purple, and it felt other-worldly, but I kind of took it in my stride. I’d been there before with Rainbow, filling big shoes, and it was the same with Purple.”
However, even though Joe had been Ritchie’s go-to vocalist, he wasn’t invited to the Rainbow reunion in 2016. Turner noted, “I was in touch with them way before, and if we’d put a Rainbow extravaganza together with the singers and players from the past, it would have been enormous. But someone told Ritchie that I wanted a million dollars, which of course wasn’t true, so in the end, Ritchie did what he did.”
So, Joe had been most rock acts’ go-to vocalist when their frontperson would leave the band. His run with Rainbow lasted long and took its place in the archives of legendary collaborations of rock music. Yet, the Deep Purple members didn’t appreciate Blackmore’s invitation to Turner to join Deep Purple since they had another vocalist in mind.
